Yep! You totally get it!
Frankly, this sort of approach is the only way I think a movie like this can be a breakout hit. Also check out the trailer for "Free Guy", also with Ryan Reynolds, but taking the perspective of a self-aware NPC in a MMO. Similar concept to what I think can work with D&D, just from a different perspective.
With all due respect to my fellow EN Worlders who want "serious" fantasy movie, that will not work. There is a reason that virtually all fantasy movies just become B-movie cheese, even with a big budget. I mean look at Warcraft! That was a 'serious' D&D movie if ever there was one. It had the biggest MMO in the world behind it with millions of players and it was basically 'meh' and pretty much disappeared shortly after release. Frankly, this is the best a serious D&D film can achieve. Wouldn't be terrible, but would be a huge missed opportunity.
D&D is not and will never be Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, GoT, or even Harry Potter. It will not happen. Those are seminal fictional works that already had a massive audience built in. The books themselves already did all the heavy lifting when it came to world building and gravitas.
A D&D movie won't be able to pull that off, even based on an existing WotC property. The best they could do would be to take on Dragonlance or Drizzt, which are probably the most well known D&D literary franchises and build a film around them. Even then, there is no reason to believe it wouldn't just turn out to be another Warcraft. There is nothing about Drizzt in particular that screams D&D in a way that would make it stand out from any other B fantasy movie, aside from maybe budget.
And frankly, a generic fantasy movie is not a "D&D" movie, even if it embraces D&D tropes like classes and races. Again, Warcraft already covered that ground. I think the best way to make something truly memorable is to capture the essence of D&D tropes in the way I described in my first post. Embrace that the film is the cinematic realization of the theater of the mind of an actual game group gaming this out somewhere off-screen.
Never show the off-screen game group or the real world. Don't make it an 'isekai' movie (i.e. people transport to the D&D world like the old cartoon). Everything should take place in the fantasy world and the fantasy world should be real to all the 'NPC's'. But the characters in the film should be self-aware, cracking wise in just the same way that every PC in every D&D game group I have ever played in has been.
And the film should lean into this and crank it up to 11. Don't apologize for it, and embrace all the game table tropes. The movie should be like the ideal live action filmed version of the best single session game night ever, told from the perspective of the PCs in-world, but completely embracing that they are player characters and the self-awareness that they are player characters.
With the right writing and direction, and I'm talking full Ryan Reynolds/James Gunn here, I guarantee this would be a huge box office smash, and would achieve more lasting recognition than 'D&D: Warcraft Clone The Movie 2'.
